Phil Starr

Hi, well done for getting there with your cab. I'd love to see a review when you've had a chance to play with it a bit. The design started out as a micro combo (a lockdown project for me in the days when you could meet in groups of six) and my prototype for your build was actually made as an add on to the micro combo. @Pea Turgh built one too. My intention was to make a combo and I have some cheap Chinese modules sitting neglected in a cupboard ready to make mine into an active cab/combo. The reason it didn't get completed was because I tried the cab out with my proper bass amp and it sounded so good with all the extra power that I went out and bought a Warwick Gnome to pair it with and took it gigging. The short answer is yes you can! I wouldn't worry about the jack, my micro cab has two on the back plate and cabs have been made with jacks for decades. Theoretically it changes the leakage of the cab and could also be a source of noise but in practice I doubt it would be an issue. Beware the Chinese amp modules, a lot of the power claims are what the chip will give at maximum supply voltage and lowest speaker impedance. Heat sinking can be an issue too. @Chienmortbb has more experience with these than I do.

That's interesting as it reflects my own experience with the Silverstone, I've stopped worrying about the cab and moved on to worrying about my sound and my playing. The speaker is so honest that turning up the mids boosts the mids rather than just compensating for a lump or dip in the speaker's response. Hearing yourself clearly tightens up your playing, I'm wanting to work harder at damping my strings which I tended to let ring when it was all a bass mush behind me. I've also started to explore my Zoom a bit more as any changes are immediately clear in their effects so it is much more rewarding.

He's a very good drummer too guys, I've heard @skidder652003s band a few times and they are loud and tight, it's a great band. The drums have that wonderful crispness where that leading edge of the drumbeat sits absolutely where it should be. This is above and beyond though. I'd love to see how you get on with the platform though Steve???

I've done small pub gigs with a Warwick Gnome and a 1x12+Horn so you would be as loud with your Big Baby. I can match the drums in volume so I don't need any more, that's what the PA is for. I don't suppose ther is a lot left but it has been a perfectly workable solution down the Dog and Duck. With your Big One I don't think you'd struggle at all. We ran some measurements on those three and there is a lot of family resemblance. They all have a smiley face response with the midrange controls and the midrange dip centred on 400Hz. The Warwick has a rising top end response and the Elf a very traditional mid suck out smiley face. You can eq them to get pretty much the same sound but the Elf probably sounds nicest out of the box. They also all trim the bass with a bit of HPF which is good as it isn't really needed and the amp protects the speakers a little.

It's not clear what speaker you want to use this with, you refer to the amp and big one 'residing two counties away'. If you are using a speaker that efficient you wouldn't need 500W+ so your downsized rig could be one of the ELF/BAM/Gnome 200W amps with a suitable speaker

Oh no, that is such a loss. Some people stick in your mind for their decency and zest for life. What a lovely man.

It looks like your speaker cutout is a bit wonky and I guess you didn't use the holes drilled for the speaker. It's not unknown for a speaker to be bolted on and then the grille clamped on afterwards which would at least make sure the speaker was held firmly and the holes were filled. Or you could just use filler. I don't think there is a gasket on the back of the fane speaker. I usually use some of the black draughtproofing strip which you seem to have on your back panel/battens. to form a gasket. Also check nothing else is loose inside and the speaker cable isn't rattling against anything.

Ha ha , my expertise is keeping things simple, there are a lot of people better qualified than me to do a feedback "bible". I think Russ maybe commented on the evil of compressors on this thread earlier on. The thing is that howlround is audio feedback. The singers voice through the PA coming back to their mic louder than their actual voice (at least at some frequencies) It'll then howl at those frequencies. If one singer has a louder voice or a better mic technique that'll make them immune to feedback in the same situation. There's a concept known as gain before feedback. Have a look at that article, I'll get back later.

From Sound on Sound "Compression can be extremely useful in dealing with the wide dynamic ranges of acoustic instruments, but it can also be troublesome where feedback is concerned. Assuming that make-up gain is being applied, compression will have the effect of 'making the quiet bits louder', which will indeed smooth out a performance, but if a channel is running close to feedback before compression is applied, adding it will probably make the situation worse. In short, when engineering a live gig, compress lightly!" The notch filter on the sax will really help and the positioning of the mic will affect resonances so spending time with your sax player away from the gig could be useful to get a consistent howl free sound. Poor mic technique from the singer is often the biggest problem. The PA and sound person is going to be blamed for that too, good luck with that Holding the mic at the knobbly end destroys the directional nature of the mic and pointing it at anywhere other than their mouths is just madness, as is pointing it at the most echoing corner they can find. I've had singers stuff mics down their cleavage or hold them in the folds of their stomachs or on a hard wooden floor between songs rather than use the conveniently placed and appropriately named mic stand. Feedback always my fault, am I bitter? Most of your solutions are in the physical world, not the desk This might be a useful read https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/preventing-acoustic-feedback-stage

Audio feedback probably deserves it's own thread Al . The short answer is experience, try turning any compression on the vocal mics off if you are having problems. That could apply to drum mics too and any other mikes that are picking up sound on stage. They are less likely to be causing problems simply because they are probably operating with less gain because the sound source is louder. Anything DI'd is really unlikely to be the source of feedback which is one reason sound engineers are so keen on them. The reason is pretty simple too; compression brings up the level of the quieter sounds and so means that mic is going to feedback more easily than one which doesn't keep turning itself up in the quiet passages. Limiting which I suppose is compression used differently could be helpful but the one knob compression a lot of decks carry are a menace when used unwisely. If you have a sound engineer sitting at your desk then lot's of things are possible but if like me the PA is 'set and forget' then the KISS principle applies.

That may be your problem. Compressors pretty much always cause feedback issues. I just wouldn't use them with a live band unless I was working just as FOH mixing. Even then I'd only use them rarely on vocals if at all. They are really something for studio use. Guitarists use them to increase sustain which is itself the result of a feedback loop where the sound from the amp makes the strings vibrate sustaining the sound.

A little bit of history. Fane's published specs around that time changed fairly frequently for the sovereign series. If I remember correctly they'd had some troubles and were effectively re-launching. The predecessor of the 10-300 was the 10-275 which had identical parameters but was rated 25W lower. The stickers on your speaker are almost identical from those on my Fane 10-275 so it may be the same speaker and from the same factory. I have a couple of spec sheets I saved from that era. My speakers were in a 2x10 which went very deep and had a pretty flat response at the cost of being quite a heavy beast. Modelling the two speakers gives a very different bass response. The old speaker is in green the new Fane10-300 in red The cab for the older speaker is 40litres and tuned to 60hz, it will also work with the newer variant but you'll get a bit less bass. It's a nice speaker but doesn't have the high end peak that the equivalent Eminence speakers have so might lack a bit of top end and need a bit of upper mid boost depending upon your taste. I think there is every chance yours is the older model.

Front to back is always tricky but side to side helps. The Peavey style vane braces on the rear panel help. It's good to try a test signal from an online signal generator through your bass amp and feel for vibrations in the panels with your finger tips. that locates the main resonances and tells you where to put the braces for best effect.

You said alongside so on the floor. I use ART 310's with my duo and bass with the cabs on the floor sounds awful, muffled and indistinct, put them on stands and they sound as good as it ever gets. They are designed to give a balanced output on stands not on the floor where the lowest frequencies are boosted by 6db. I've often wondered about taking a stand and putting the 310's at head height behind me but we are in-ears now so no backline needed and i don't take it to many gigs.

Whilst you have the cab apart have a look and see if there is any internal bracing of the panels. If there are large panels with no stiffening then even a thin strip of wood across opposite panels (side to side, back to front, top to bottom) will stiffen the box and reduce panel resonances. Something like a length of broom handle or a wooden batten fixed properly with screws/glue will do it.

These are really common, it's a really simple solution to protecting the speakers, mainly the tweeters. The bulb has a very low resistance when cold but as the current increases it heats up and the resistance rises reducing the current to the tweeter. In the quieter sections it cools down and full power is restored.

I run the PA, I have lot's of leads Upon reflection I mainly buy coffee beans from Lidl too.

Confession time, I'm losing my hearing, I've significant loss right down to 6kHz with some frequencies worse than others. I can still follow normal conversations and enjoy music but in noisy environments I can only follow someone if I can see them and only one person at a time. If I lose much more I'm going to be genuinely isolated from my friends and I'm going to have to give up playing altogether because I won't be able to hear what they are playing. All this talk about in-ears being isolating, that feeling lasts about 30 mins, then you adapt, you can still see the audience, still smile at the friendly couple in the third row. Any fleeting sense of isolation soon passes and will be nothing to the isolation you will feel when that thumping back line and trouser flapping bass finally rob you of the ability to year your friends and loved ones.

Congratulations, coincidentally we did our first completely in-ears gig a couple of weeks ago and we've been doing rehearsals with only in ears for a couple of months. We've kind of gently evolved in that direction. Every word here exactly reflects our experience and the critical thing is being able to properly hear each other and yourself. You can just play with more confidence and freedom, it's literally a revelation. the killer line though is: "However, the main revelation which should have been totally obvious but wasnt, was that for years it's been the amps on stage that have been the problem on stage regarding hearing everyone, rather than being a necessity to hear everyone.....But I'm now convinced it's the amps that were the problem. Just sound smashing around everywhere."

Velcro Cable Ties packs of 30, 200x20mm Black or colours £1.99. The quality is OK, they won't last forever but should work for a few years. I'd prefer a 30x200mm but at this price I can have a cable tie on every cable for the price of a large Americano. There are also packs of 20 300mm ties

You will probably need to get some kit to do in ears, it needn't be expensive. The standard set up at the moment is a pair of KZ ZS10 Pro headphones and a Behringer P2 beltpack headphone amp. There's all the details and more in this thread https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/389429-the-iem-in-ear-monitors-bible-thread/ For discussion on mixing desks https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/468782-compact-mixing-desks-what-are-you-using/ might be useful

Getting a drummer is problematic for your PA unless they use eDrums. At that point everything gets so loud on stage that three things become issues; monitoring, picking up unwanted sounds in the vocal mics and potentially acoustic feedback. Even that leaves out the big one, your hearing becomes threatened by the sound levels on stage. I'd strongly suggest you plan for this from the outset and you say: Hold on to that thought and plan this from the start and let it guide your purchases. I use an RCF M18 but Behringer, Soundcraft and Zoom all make great digital mixers with plenty of aux feeds. The Behringer mixers and some of the others offer multitrack recording also so you could trade in your R24 to part fund a good mixer. We run rehearsals with all in-ears, no PA or floor monitors needed. for gigs everything just goes via the PA. our guitarist still uses his guitar amp but turned down and miked up. I'm hoping to get him to go through a modeller and lose that too. Buying a digital mixer is key to everything. Your sound will be in-ears and you'll need to organise that. You can each adjust your own monitor mixes right from day one and that will remain your personal sound whether you are on stage or in the shed. You can keep your programmed sounds and a click track or lose them at will when you add a drummer and send a balanced mix to the PA which means you have complete control of your band sound. The PA then just functions to make everything loud enough for the audience. I think your Yamaha 400 should be good enough at least for a while. Yamaha claim 129db and whilst I think that must be peak level that will make a lot of noise. The 400/600 series are much more competent than the 300/500 series that were it's predecessors. Ultimately I'd probably replace it with some more capable active speakers but I doubt you'd need to do that quickly. With no backline amps and currently no drums to drown out you can just turn it up to the volume you are happy with. There aren't many pubs down in Cornwall or the rest of the West Country you won't be able to fill with sound. Concentrate on finding the right mixer and all the in-ears and headphone amps first of all and get that bit right.

Well on the strength of this build I dug my 110T out dusted it off and took it to rehearsal last week. Our band have gone in-ears so none of the cabs get regular work recently but we had an old school guitarist with a 2x12 Marshall (with hearing problems, I wonder why?) so it was an ideal opportunity to play with a 'proper' amp. I have to say the 110T sounded bloody lovely, just right for the room and the set up and no trouble keeping up. Also a joy to carry in and out, it's a proper featherweight

Hi Russ. @EBS_freak So the $64,000 question is whether there is a difference in practice between the pre's in the sorts of mixers that bands are using live and the ones in the 2in 2out interfaces that most of us start off with? I've been using a very basic Alesis mixer as an interface at home, just for practice, and swapping an interface in for that gives a whopping improvement in sound plus a noticeable drop in latency when recording, I've used the Alesis for rehearsals where we've also used a Yamaha MG series mixer and the Yamaha pre's are just so much better. Swapping my bigger Yamaha MG for my RCF M18 digital mixer has given another very noticeable improvement. I ought to compare the M18 with an interface for myself but the M18 is always packed up for gigs. Subjectively I suspect the M18 and the interface would be comparable in sound quality. There are very definitely big differences in the quality of mic pre's that are clearly audible even to my very worn hearing. We probably don't pay enough attention to that when choosing mixers. So the question, are the pre's in digital mixers like the Behringer and Soundcraft in the same league as the sort of Focusrite Scarlett type interface that most of us use at home?

We've toyed with the idea of a BC 1x15 cab and I have one here using an Eminence Deltalite, not quite the spec you are looking for though. I'm afraid Covid rather interrupted our plans as all our designs are tested playing live as well as being measured in the 'shed'. Limited playing opportunities and other more personal issues have meant not getting out most weeks. There are a few technical problems with your scheme. Availability of a suitable driver being the biggest issue. If you want a single 15 for a bass cab it has to have reasonable output up to roughly 4000Hz. For a 15" driver that means it is operating under cone break up for a lot of it's range and the cone breakup has to be well controlled. Because the high end is bound to be compromised most 15's have a bit of a peak in the kHz range which kind of compensates for the early roll off at the top end. Almost all the commercially available 15's are designed to be used in multi-way systems and to extend the bass downwards rather than the treble upwards so they have heavy cones to lower fs and make them pistonic up to the crossover point. This lowers their efficiency. If you want 600W handling then you really need a 4" voice coil so you are now in the realm of pro-audio bass drivers. The other limiting factor is excursion, a speaker might be able to handle 600W of electrical heating but if it reaches it's excursion limits at 300W then there is nothing to be gained by using a bigger amp and more expensive, heavier driver to achieve the same output levels. Similarly if you go for 4 ohms to get more power out of the amp the same physical limits on excursion mean that you gain nothing in sound output. There aren't many if any drivers that meet all your design parameters. Few meet the 100db/W even on the manufacturers spec, most are dedicated bass drivers so won't have enough high end to be usable as a single bass cab. I'd probably opt for the Eminence Kappalite 15HO as the best all rounder and now priced fairly competitively in the UK. That's not news, Barefaced used them in their first cabs and BFM recommends them as do many others. It's 450W and sounds good with bass but excursion is only 5mm. You'll achieve sound levels peaks of 125db+ though which is plenty enough to destroy your hearing. The other possible candidate is the Faital HF520 a bit more expensive and heavier but with an acceptable looking top end, that is 600W but lower quoted efficiency than the Eminence. It does have better excursion but I haven't modelled the two against each other so I can't really say if you would gain much at this point. A Kappalite in a box is a good solution and would come in at around £300 as a self build. It would need a port